A microburst describes an event when a large amount of burst data is received in milliseconds.
Typical microbursts last for 1 to 100 milliseconds, so that the instantaneous burst data rate is tens or hundreds times the average data rate or even exceeds the port bandwidth.
Despite their brevity, these bursts can exceed the capacity of network buffers, especially on switches or network interface cards (NICs), causing packet drops.
This disrupts the timely and accurate delivery of market data and order messages—critical for high-frequency trading and low-latency strategies—resulting in missed opportunities, incorrect decisions, or execution based on stale information. Since microbursts often occur during volatile periods, they can also create fairness issues among market participants and are difficult to detect with standard monitoring tools, requiring specialized, high-resolution telemetry or packet capture systems such as Beeks Analytics.